Say you were a magic creator..

Just hypothetically - what would you do if you found a perfect illusion?
One that just had it all, what would you do with it?

Would you only use it for yourself, never even show it anywhere on the net so it would never be revealed or stolen? Or would you dare to start selling it? I mean, under todays conditions of the market...

What do the Pro's do with their personal gems?

They have them stolen.

I would sell it to David Copperfield.

I would take out a patent on any gimmick involved. At least then you have some legal ground to stand on when it gets reverse engineered. The only way to prevent it from ever being exposed would be to never perform it. With todays cell phones with built in video capability it is unreasonable to expect to never be recorded.

I wouldn't sell it mass market like many effects today. I would only sell to verifiable magi directly. No web sales where you just click "add to cart" type in your CC number and then its on its way. Every purchaser would have to sign a non disclosure agreement.

Or I would give away the instructions for free but market said patented gimmick. Since I would hold the patent I would be the only one legally able to manufacture it. This comes from the side of me that has been a strong supporter of the open source software movement for years. Even in open source software there is money to be made if your product is good enough.

I was going to give my answer, but then I realized my definition of "perfect" may not be what you had in mind. Can you elaborate on the term "perfect" as you see it?

Hm you're right, "perfect" can be understood in many ways...

let's just paraphrase it ~
A mind-boggling Close-up trick with a beautiful pattern that would involve a lot of fantasy and good sense alike to make it more than approriate for any type of audience; including impossible proofs like a sign from the audience, including spectator involvement as a non-stooge assistant which triggers the wonder him/herself, leading into a more than visual climax leaving the object that went through the impossible itself as a prove of magic and a souvenir and lastly the one thing that will keep them from ever finding out any way it ever could have happened. You know, just something that constantly gets everyones mind in a catch-22 situation whenever they try to reconstruct it, no matter how often they watch it in live-performance.

ah d***. guess now it doesn't sound like a general question anymore.
remember... just hypothetically.

I guess no illusion a human mind could ever come up with would be perfect, since it would always be possible for someone else to come up with something similar.
It's kind of a dilemma.

How do creators decide if they publish something or keep it for themselves?

Creators decide to publish a trick when they see in their audience's eyes that it is perfect. It doesn't have to do with method, it has to do with entertainment.

Your problem seems to come from the strong tendency of magician to forget the audience's role in their art. For a trick to be perceived as magical, the spectators' imagination has to take part in allocating the magic to the outcome.

Now if the effect is perfect, it means that it cannot or will not be backtracked. As Tommy underlines, it can only be stolen. A risk that gets reduced when the script makes the climax less challenging and more metaphorical.

You can patent a method but not an entertainment. Furthermore for depositing a patent, we have to describe the method and that is the surest way to have it stolen forcing us to shift job from magician to lawyer.

Creators publish all the time. Publishing is quite possibly the best way to keep something to yourself. You just have to know where, and when to look for the material. Lucky for me, and others, magicians tend not to actually read a lot.

I'd perfect it and perform it -being a "perfect" illusion it would play well and my show would be a great success.

...And if DC or CA wanted to buy it, then I'd sell it! Being a perfect illusion I would be able to fetch a pretty penny for the rights.

Well, going by your definition (thanks much), and changing it just a bit to read "A mind-boggling illusion with a beautiful pattern... " I would take advantage of today's reality by performing it on a TV special. Once. And only once. Never again.

If it's "perfect," I wouldn't need to worry about a gazillion bootleg clips on YouTube or anywhere else: it would be mine and mine forever. Copies and knock-offs would be known as just that. And the initial effect would be seen as the initial effect, done by me, forever.

It's funny, but I've been thinking for a long time that, if I were to get back into performing, I'd set up this ongoing personal tradition of doing an effect "once only" on major media, like a huge live audience on real-time on TV. And I've thought of a number of effects I'd use for this. Ah, dreams...

TV magic is not magic.

Guess one should just spend lots of years trying and making sure it'll be backtracking-proof enough for him not to worry about showing it to the Net. I mean.. there are a lot of intelligent people out there and it might occure that someone just sits down and thinks about it several days until he figured out any possibility. Couldn't that outsider then just start selling it for his own profit? ...that's what I meant with 'stolen'. There wouldn't be any copyright, right?

Hm, maybe I'm just a little paranoid.

I tend to agree with that -- given how a lot of it seems to be produced. However, televising a performance before a live audience, with no cuts or re-takes (and with plenty of witnesses to say so), can be a permanent record of a real performance. Done well, I totally believe that such a recording could be as effective as a live performance.

And totally off the subject... why do we say "live audience?"

Since I have no real use for my own private "perfect" effect (in fact I don't even believe in the concept) I would market a really effective new method. What would be gained by retaining sole use?

Common, widespread, familiar, regular and known things lake an element of surprise for one thing.

All of which is why I stay away from effects which are popular. If I created an effect which were likely to become popular, I would most certainly not perform it. Plenty of great material in the public domain alone, I don't need "special" material, and I pity any who do.

I would first enjoy performing it...

Just the fact that I was blessed to be able create such a thing is in itself a gift...

Sell it or not?

Follow your heart.

I would drink water while I was doing it so no one could ever see what I was doing.

Well I thought about it some more yesterday night. The thought of several other magicians learning an Illusion you came up with and carrying it out into the world making tons of people smile... kinda heart-warming.

I'll solve a little part of the topic... yes, I came up with something good. And it keeps me from sleeping cause I have to think about it all night, haha. I opened this topic cause I needed help in my decision. I never really got what people meant when they talked about an illusion as "their baby" - now I do. There were a lot of worries crossing my mind, whenever I thought about it. Anyway, the first thought of my post gives a good reason to be confident. First thing I did was a lot of research to look if something similar has been found so far, but there isn't any trick-principle that comes close to it. Now I'm not pretty long into magic (2 years now) and I'm still having my final school exams at this moment, which just takes a lot of the time I would like to spent with magic. Yet I'm just happy I found a good way into it. Several books and projects I went through were just exactly the right thing to learn what magic is about (BIG thanks to Paul Harris) that was lastly also the reason and the motivation for me to build in a very neat pattern and audience-participation. Well I don't want to list everything about the whole thing now. I rather want to lead over to another question...

Say I'd take another year to get everything down to be just as backtracking proof and just as suitable as a good series of close-up tricks and routines needs to be... what would be the next step? I thought I'd start by getting a video-performance of the one main trick online, publicly. But I guess it would be better to contact other publishers directly and ask for their interest first... wouldn't it?

If this will go as planned I will spent a lot of time working on a series of Close-Up Illusions with this principle, making sure it will be just as useful to others as it already is to me.
Aaah... pleasant anticipation, hahaha.

If a trick is really "your baby", then you have to bring it to maturity by having this baby of yours confronted with society and outside influences... then it gradually improves all the way up to maturity and this is when, to prove that it exists on its own, your baby leaves you. It's just life, you simply cannot keep your babies as babies otherwise they are not grown up babies they are dwarfs.